Beer with subtitles

Well, I’m back from Japan a couple of weeks. I’ve started the new job, re-commenced complaining about Irish weather and life is good generally – however, I’ve still yet to blog about some of my wacky holiday adventures.

In retrospect, it was one hell of a trip and I did an awful lot…while an extra day or two at the end would have been very welcome, three weeks was actually long enough to see all the major cities and sights while still providing an excuse to return at some future date for another couple of weeks.

While I’m curious to see just how much mileage I got from my Japan Rail Pass, such stats and figures can wait for another time; for now, I’ll provide links (and placeholders) to everything I did and simply observe how the amount of blogging was inversely proportional to both the “craziness” of the city I was in at the time and amount of jet lag.

Here we go…:

Day 1, Thursday 5th:

• fly to Tokyo

Day 2, Friday 6th:

• imperial palace grounds (garden closed)
• haranjuku bridge
• wandering around ginza
• metro
• national museum of modern art
• yasukini-jinja
• roti + anchor steam steam beer
• roppongi hills – view only

Day 3, Saturday 7th:

• asakusa/senso-ji
• the garden
• yamanote line
• ginza at night

Day 4, Sunday 8th:

• shinkansen
• nikko/toshu-gu temple/senzsuji
• tokyo international forum (late)
• orchel

Day 5, Monday 9th:

• skyscrapers of west shinjuku
  • metropolitan offices tour
  • park hyatt
  • shinjuku station
• harajuku:
  • takeshita-dori
  • design festa
  • shopping
  • sushi conveyor belt bar on omatesando

Day 6, Tuesday 10th:

• LEAVE TOKYO FOR OSAKA
• shinkansen – talking to guy on the train
• the osaka pancake thing
• osaka aquarium
• osaka bay and ferris wheel
• segaworld
• wandering about fancy buildings unsucessfully looking for food

Day 7, Wednesday 11th:

• day trip to nara:
  • todai-ji
  • kasuga taisha
  • nara koen
  • horyu-ji
• umeda sky observatory
• yodobashi camera

Day 8, Thursday 12th:

• osaka castle
• osaka museum + tdk studios
• osaka-hiroshima
• UAX diner – chat with the owner

Day 9, Friday 13th:

• hiroshima peace park
• hiroshima peace museum
• mario’s
• hiroshima bank building
• art museum (dali)
• garden
• yamaha store
• oyster boat

Day 10, Saturday 14th:

• miyajima and its giant rice scoop
• STRANDED IN GRAND HYATT, FUKUOKA

Day 11, Sunday 15th:

• fukuoka – nagasaki
• nagasaki peace museum
• nagasaki peace park + around
• sky ropeway viewing point

Day 12, Monday 16th:

• glover garden and hollander slope
• spectacles bridge
• nagasake – kyoto
• STAY TOWER 2 HOTEL, KYOTO

Day 13, Tuesday 17th:

• gion matsuri
• little bit around the shopping district
• book the two tours
• check into hotel granvia…sushi + beer

Day 14, Wednesday 18th:

• nijo-ji
• katsura rikyu, 3.30

Day 15, Thursday 19th:

• shugakw-in, 11
• gingaku-ji
• kiyomizu dera

Day 16, Friday 20th:

• hall of 1001 buddhas
• kinkaku-gi
• zen garden
• the wrong temple

Day 17, Saturday 21st:

• a day on the train: kyoto -> hakodate

Day 18, Sunday 22nd:

• showa shin-zan + usu-zan
• toya-ko
• hakodate ropeway + night-time view

Day 19, Monday 23rd:

• onoma koen quasi national park
• onuma beer
• hakodate -> sapporo
• wander around sapporo – clock + tower

Day 20, Tuesday 24th:

• hakkaido old town resort thing
• sapporo brewery
• fly sapporo -> tokyo, 9.25pm

Day 21, Wednesday 25th:

• omatesando
• shibuya
• akhirabara

Day 22, Thursday 26th:

• LEAVE JAPAN FOR IRELAND, 11am

In today’s “on this day” column on Wired, the bombing of Hiroshima.

A bit strange now having seen both cities…52 years later both of these cities are thriving and have much more to see than just their atomic bomb museums (although these are, of course, well worth seeing).

Holy shit.

Forget Ginza or Shinjuku…this is where it’s at.

I buy shares in Tower Records and vow to return to Tokyo some day, pretty much just to explore Shibuya.

As the title says…my final day in Japan and I’m back in Tokyo for the flight home. It wasn’t too easy getting back in time from Sapporo and so I really want a memorable day, as if to make it all worthwhile (obviously, missing my flight home would be pretty memorable too, but I’d like a good memorable day).

Some ideas I had when last I was here:

• trek out to Mount Fuji
• travel up to Sendai
• wander down Omatesando

These ideas hail from a time that seems so distant now. I’ve done “all” the beauty spots and “all” the temples, seen some odd things like breweries and travelled on a lot of trains. I’m too tired for Mount Fuji and my feet are too knackered; I’m too fed up of trains to get to Sendai (two hours on the shinkansen). What I haven’t done is a serious day of shopping. This I had notions of leaving towards the end, when I wouldn’t have to carry all of the purchases too far…

The obvious choice is Omatesando. The guide book treats it as a sort of Grafton Street of Tokyo (ergo, Japan?; the world?!?!); a tree-lined avenue with all the pretty aspirational shops such as Prada and Gucci, it looked very promising when I got here late one night earlier in my trip. A damn nice place to wander around during the day for a tired tourist and perhaps good t-shirt hunting ground, too. When the sun goes down, there’s Tower Records in Shibuya.

First, I take the Yamanote from Tokyo to Shinjuku to see Yodobashi Camera, allegedly the biggest camera shop in the world. I’m not convinced, however: it’s clearly smaller than the Osaka branch and – with its kanji-only signs – not particularly geared for tourists (no tax-free section, either). I don’t stay here very long but Shinjuku is still an awesome place to wander around for a little while – the tiny little streets around the station I completely ignored last time are fascinating.

After this, it’s onto the main business of Omatesando. Harajuku is the relevant stop on the Yamanote; this is just two stops from Shinjuku, in the hip south-western part of the city. Looking like something from the countryside, it’s an odd station for Tokyo. You wouldn’t think is just two minutes walk from one of the biggest shopping districts on the planet.

Once here, it’s mostly window shopping, with some notable exceptions that make it all worthwhile:

1. I pick up a wonderful super-fun-happy Japanese-English t-shirt declaring “lets all in fun”.
2. I discover on one of the side-streets the best t-shirt shop in the entire world: the floor contains racks with just one example of each design whilst the walls are covered floor to ceiling with tubes containing the same designs in each size. This sweet shop-style store is the single most efficient route to t-shirt hipness I can imagine and I buy out half the shop, earning me a free t-shirt book and a wonderful problem for packing later tonight in the process.
3. In one of the few places in the whole of Japan with no English-speaking staff, the Kawai shop have great trouble understanding the word “trumpet”. I mime playing such an instrument and some bright spark figures it out – “trumpeto!”. A completely different word, obviously. Anyway, this initial confusion notwithstanding, they have a brilliant selection of sheet music and I finally pick up the complete trumpet orchestral repertoire for a song, at just 2200¥. The only problem is that, soon, I will know how to write all the great composers’ names in kanji.

All these Trev-friendly shops are clustered at the southern end of the street. After this I just admire the funky shop fronts.

Finally, at the very very top of Omatesando (and just after a brief visit to Starbucks to collect their Tokyo mug) is the architectural highlight, the Prada store.

You cannot but go in and investigate, but this place makes Brown Thomas look like a 100¥ shop. I become dangerously attached to a spectacular woolly jumper which the shop assistant describes as “very cute”. At 80,000¥ (almost €500), I can’t disagree. Similarly attractive t-shirts priced at €150 stay similarly on the rack.

Thus ends my trek up Omatesando and my last daylight in Japan; with t-shirts, music and weird and wonderful buildings it was more or less exactly what I wanted.

Next destination is Tower Records, Shibuya, but I pause briefly in Spiral Records which is just full of funk and soul records. They allows you to try most of them on their Denon CD player listening posts. This I do and I make a souveneir purchase before descending down towards the subway.

On reflection, I realise I’ve never taken an internal flight at all – not even in the states. Naturally, this owes, at least in part, to my slight train obsession. This time, however, I simply don’t have time to indulge that passion – an entire day on the train was “fun” once but I can’t do it again without sacrificing my last full day in Tokyo.

So, I swallow my pride and book an internal flight from Sapporo to Tokyo. Miraculously, a flight with Air Do at only 24 hours notice costs only 17,000¥ (about €100). The surcharge alone for the 16 hours overnight train from Sapporo is about 22,000¥. I don’t feel so bad and now I console myself with the knowledge that at least the trip is noteworthy, in one fairly major way, for being the busiest air route (domestic or international) in the entire world (easily beating even Dublin-London) with about 25 million passengers per year.

Time to build a new shinkansen perhaps…?

Anyway, it was surprisingly easy to book this over the phone but trying to spell “Trevor” in an Irish accent to a Japanese speaker is an exercise in patience and international relations.

As is customary, after a very nice and very leisurely day I still somehow end up in a bit of a panic when the “express” airport train turns out not to be so fast at all. I encounter another strange bit of Japanese time-keeping when querying the rail attendant about this:

I thought the train only took 36 minutes?

Yes, 36 minutes, express!

But 8.10 to 8.58 is 48 minutes?

(check in time for the 9.20 flight is 9.05)

That’s right, 36 minutes!

(she ushers me proudly but quickly towards the platform)

When I arrive I have, by my calculations, a full 4 minutes in which to check in. Never in my life will I negotiate any airport with such fluidity as I have tonight (although this is more a reflection on the good people at New Chitose airport than myself): I check in with 1 minute to spare.

The staff and airport are a study in composure: my baggage is processed in seconds, there’s no passport control (I forgot about this) and it’s a quick walk to the gate. I suddenly see why internal flights are so popular.

90 minutes later, back in Tokyo, I take the monorail from Haneda airport back to Tokyo Station, briefly passing through the most impressive bit of infrastructure of the whole trip: at one point, the monorail is suspended about 100m in the air above a regular rail line which, in turn, passes over a road which – unless I was mistaken, as it was dark – ran over a car park. And there was a river nearby, too.

Definitely back in Tokyo!

I chanced upon some of this today in, of all places, Onuma.

I dunno how to review beer: it’s nice. Not as nice perhaps as something like Orchel but about 1,000,000,000 times better than a Heino. Closer to the former and as far away from the latter as is possible.

There’s a few different varieties. I plumped for the darkest, at 8%.

Very soon, I’m very glad I trekked up to Sapporo.

The city lies off the Shinkansen line but is the third largest city in Japan; this probably explains why the Sapporo-Tokyo air route is the busiest in the entire world. I suspect that in a day or two I may well be come the latest person to travel this route but, for now, I’m very impressed with Sapporo.

The station reminds me of Kyoto’s: it’s quite new, has at least three shopping centres attached – plus about 50 restaurants – and a JR hotel offering discounts to rail pass holders. Unlike Kyoto, however, this station is very easy to navigate and, crucially, it’s situated at the very heart of town.

As such, it makes for a wonderful base from which to explore the city. I have just a little while to wander about and so I seek out the “famous” Sapporo clock tower. Like Hakodate and Nagasaki, Sapporo was a port town opened up to the west much earlier than the rest of Japan and so has a number of nineteenth century buildings along with a very non-Japanese street layout.

Even from this quick nighttime tour, it reminds me – more than anywhere else in Japan – of New York with its grid system and bright neon-lit squares that are just jumping. This only makes it all the more unusual that a fairly nondescript western-style clock tower should be a symbol of Sapporo, but nonetheless it’s closely associated with the city.

I take a quick look and am, like Will Ferguson – with whose progress through Japan my own now coincides – suitably underwhelmed.

Far more interesting is the Sapporo TV tower, situated at the site from which Sapporo street addresses emanate. This is just about the only city in Japan with a logical street address system; modelled on a similar system to Washington D.C.’s, this TV tower is the equivalent of their capitol building.

Unlike the capitol building, the TV tower an open-air beer garden underneath as part of the Sapporo beer festival (this is beer country). Unfortunately, I’m too late to sample anything.

Energised by all this, I take a wander down to Susukino, which must be the liveliest night-time district north of Tokyo.

What glorious excess before bedtime. I silently add Sapporo’s simple two-line subway to my private list of underground systems taken and head back to the hotel.

It was such a beautiful day (again – after two weeks of rain, rain, rain) that I postponed the tour of Sapporo brewery for another day in favour of exploring Onoma Koen Quasi National Park.

The park lies just 20km north of Hakodate on the Hakodate-Sapporo line and, on a suitably clear day, affords magnificent views of the dormant volcano of Komagatake.

Lake Onuma contains hundreds of islands, many of them linked together with bridges. A map from the tourist office shows the walking route, which you can easily cover in a couple of hours; I took my time to photograph everything, get a little bit lost and even sample some of the Onuma Craft Brewery’s wares.

But, before that, amateur photographer heaven: blue sky, water and a volcano. It might not like subtle dusk views of Kyoto, but by god even my trusty Ixus 50 can photograph a volcano in broad daylight:

A real life, active, steam-emitting and – as recently as 2000 – erupting volcano made for a very welcome change from temples, shrines and cute tame deer.

The day started badly: trains to the the nearest “major” town, Toya, aren’t exactly frequent so there was no time for breakfast. Upon arrival in Toya (90 minutes on the slowest, hottest and bumpiest train I’ve encountered in Japan), the local bus to Toya-ko Onsen has left 5 minutes earlier and the next is 45 minutes away. Fine, I’ll get some food – but, and surely this a first for a Japanese town – there is not a single restaurant open. Definition of a one-horse town: Toya.

A taxi whisks me to Toya-ko Onsen, home to the caldera lake of Toya-ko and the tiny island of Oshima contained therein. It’s a pleasant little lake-side town and a necessary stop since it’s a short bus ride from the volcano. Right away I find a lovely restaurant serving enormously filling scallop curries with rice (for less than €5 – how on earth do these places survive?) and the bus to the volcano is just round the corner.

Wow:

This is Showa Shin-zan. It’s not the volcano, however (Usu-zan, behind the camera, is the volcano); this is a 405m lava dome / mountain that was formed in 1943 over the course of just 18 months. Its presence was feared as a beacon to enemy bombers and its existence was covered up until after the war but a local vulcanologist chronicled its entire creation from start to end. This same vulcanologist later bought the land and refused to ever charge people to see it.

Today, Showa Shin-zan is a “Special Natural Treasure” of Japan and Mimatsu Masao has a rather nice memorial statue and museum in his honour.

At the end of the usual row of souvenier and ice-cream shops lies the entrance to a ropeway running to the top of Usu-zan, the volcano itself which last erupted only in 2000. The town of Toya-ko was evacuated for three months, at which time it re-opened with lower prices…this might explain the price of my scallops earlier.

Unlike the two workers above, I favour the conventional inside approach to ropeway journeying. At the top lies a viewing point with the volcano of Usu-zan behind and the Pacific Ocean ahead.

This viewing point also leads to a short hiking trail around a crater at the top of the volcano; I trekked a tiny bit of the way – just enough to see, well, a smoking hole in the ground…

All very impressive and kind-of-dangerous-albeit-in-a-very-safe-way but the real highlight for me remained Showa Shin-zan. There’s another viewing point for this but I found it looks better from the ground. I returned there simply to wander around admiring the lava dome before catching the bus back to Toya-ko for a quick look at the lake.

I’ve had this strange compulsion to reach Hokkaido – having ventured to Nagasaki in the very south-west, it seems only appropriate and somehow fitting to reach the very north-east. Coast to coast, as it were. It is a three-week long trip and I did buy this rail pass, so what else am I going to do?

Riding the shinkansen is a little odd: it is the fastest train in the world (or thereabouts; certainly the most extensive/fastest) but it really doesn’t feel like it. The track is so smooth and the engines so quiet that the air conditioning is considerably noisier than both. Ocasionally you feel a burst of acceleration when the turbo booster (or afterburner, warp engines or whatever these things have) engages…but you still only get a slightly higher pitched engine noise for its troubles.

However, when you venture off the beaten track a little to where the shinkansen doesn’t shine, you realise just how fast it is. It’s as if its speed cannot be observed directly; it must instead be inferred from slower, inferior trains. Or something like that.

A trip to Hokkaido certainly requires you to leave the comfort and regularity of the shinkansen behind. While the Nozomi 700 blazes through the 1174km from Tokyo to Fukuoka in under 5 hours, it’s at least 11 hours from Tokyo to Sapporo – with two changes along the way.

Starting this morning from Kyoto I figured I could reach Hokkaido today, but not Sapporo (the main city). Instead, I could spend a night in Hakodate and then head for Sapporo. The guide-book lists a number of interesting diversions at Hakodate (more than Sapporo, as it turns out) so it’s a day or so in Hakodate then up to Sapporo for another day before returning to Tokyo and, soon after, home.

Anyway, all today’s travelling required three separate train journeys, for a total of 11 hours:

1. Kyoto-Tokyo
   Three hours on the Hikari super-express. When I arrive, the track is miraculously near Yaesu North, the one part of Tokyo Station I’m familiar with. It’s funny how I cursed this vast labyrinth of a station before but today it’s kind: I find a (big) locker for my (big) luggage, then the replacement ipod cable and USB 2.0 hub I need in, literally, 30 seconds of arriving before a quick lunch and espresso prior to searching for track 23.
2. Tokyo-Hachinoe
   Almost three hours on the Hayate super-express. At 16 carraiges, this is surely the longest train ever. Soon I realise it splits in two at Morioka; a wonderful sign disembarking at Hachinoe says “dead heading train” (de-heading, i.e. splitting, train?).
   
3. Hachinoe-Hakodate
   Yet another three hours on a local service. This is notable for passing through the Seikan Tunnel. According to the Rough Guide this is – at 54km – the longest underwater tunnel in the world (over 200m below the sea separating Honshu and Hokkaido in parts) and the second-longest tunnel of any type. It took 40 years to build and, as if to commemorate in some small way this effort and the train’s progress through it (took us about 40 minutes) the train has the cutest little graphic I’ve ever seen:
   
   

Getting back to Tokyo actually presents a minor problem; it’s either an overnight train (16 hours!) or an internal flight (boo). Indeed, the long journey time between Tokyo and Sapporo has led to terrible under-use of the Seikan Tunnel (after all the effort building the damn thing) and Tokyo-Sapporo to become one of the busiest air routes in the whole world.

We’ll see…

UPDATE 16/8/2007: this was a distance of 1417.6km.